DOE OSTI · 1977385
Optically connected memory for disaggregated data centers
Abstract
Recent advances in integrated photonics enable the implementation of reconfigurable, high-bandwidth, and low energy-per-bit interconnects in next-generation data centers. We propose and evaluate an Optically Connected Memory (OCM) architecture that disaggregates the main memory from the computation nodes in data centers. OCM is based on micro-ring resonators (MRRs), and it does not require any modification to the DRAM memory modules. We calculate energy consumption from real photonic devices and integrate them into a system simulator to evaluate performance. Here, our results show that (1) OCM is capable of interconnecting four DDR4 memory channels to a computing node using two fibers with 1.02 pJ energy-per-bit consumption and (2) OCM performs up to 5.5× faster than a disaggregated memory with 40G PCIe NIC connectors to computing nodes.
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Gonzalez, Jorge, Palma, Mauricio G., Hattink, Maarten, Rubio-Noriega, Ruth, Orosa, Lois, Mutlu, Onur, Bergman, Keren, Azevedo, Rodolfo. 2022-01-29. Optically connected memory for disaggregated data centers. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpdc.2022.01.013
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